In spring 1962, a young black girl is killed at a civil rights demonstration on a university campus in Atlanta. The next day a home in Georgia is burned. Both events are etched into the memory of Cole Bishop, eerily playing out the predictions of a former classmate named Marie Fitzpatrick.<BR>Cole and Marie are high school seniors when they first meet in fall 1954. Cole is a native-born Southerner accepting the traditions of segregation as a way of life. Marie is a recent transplant from Washington, DC, a brilliant and assertive nonconformist with bold predictions about a new world that is about to be ushered in by the force of desegregation. The odd friendship between the two of them continues after high school in a series of tender and revealing letters.<BR>The story revolves around the fiftieth reunion of the Overton High School class of 1955. Cole's return for the reunion reunites him with classmates who, over time, have accepted a guarded assimilation of the races.<BR>He is also reacquainted with two black men - Moses Elder, the town's mayor, and Little John Curry, a reclusive artist who carries the scars of the burned house, and in those encounters, he understands clearly the influence of Marie on his life.<BR>The Book of Marie is the story of a generation - whites and blacks - who ignited the war of change. Yet, it is also as much about the power of places - the finding of home - as it is about-the history of events.